MA-thesis in General Linguistics (AMV441L)

MA-thesis in General Linguistics

Historical Morphology (ÍSM008F)

This seminar deals with the history of the inflectional system of Icelandic from Proto-Germanic to modern times with special emphasis on selected problems. Recent writings on Icelandic historical morphology will be discussed. We will study text examples and their value as sources of information on the development of Icelandic morphology. The development of Icelandic word formation and different types of compounds will also be discussed.

Assignments: Students will give presentations on text samples and/or particular morphological problems.

Independent Study A (AMV002F)

Independent study project. Please contact head of program for more information.

Independent Study B (AMV004F)

Independent study project. Please contact head of program for more information.

Signed and spoken languages (AMV603M)

For a long time, sign languages were believed to be incomplete languages compared to spoken languages even if there was no research to support this claim. It was not until 1960 that William C. Stokoe  showed that American Sign Language (ASL) had the same basic grammatical structure as spoken languages even if ASL was expressed by hand movements and various non-manuals. Crucially, sign languages have meaningless units that can be combined to form meaningful signs just as sounds can be arranged to form meaningful words in spoken languages. This is one of the most important discoveries in linguistics in the 20th century even though it did not get much attention at the time. Since then, more evidence has been added to show the underlying commonalities of signed and spoken languages and sign language research is now a thriving field that has moved far beyound ASL, including Icelandic Sign Language.

This course focuses on the two main classes of human languages, sign languages and spoken languages, but the main emphasis will be on sign languages. Drawing on data of various kinds, the commonalities between signed and spoken languages will be shown with respect to phonology (the system of meaningless units), morphology, syntax, sociolinguistics, language change and other topics. The discussion will also focus on the contrasting properties of signed and spoken languages and to what extent they can be traced to different modalities.

Writing and Editing (ÍSL101F)

Training in various aspects of the writing and editing of scientific texts. Various kinds of texts (non-fiction) examined and evaluated. Training in reviewing and commenting on scientific texts and in other aspects of editorial work. The main emphasis will be on the writing of articles, but other kinds of texts will also be considered, both shorter (conference abstracts, reviews) and longer (theses, books), as well as research proposals. Discussion of guidelines for the preparation of manuscripts. Types of plagiarism and how to avoid them and find them. Texts on different subjects will be used as examples, especially writings in linguistics, literature and history. The book Skrifaðu bæði skýrt og rétt will be used as a textbook (Höskuldur Þráinsson 2015).

This course is open to students of many MA programmes in the School of Humanities, cf. the regulations of the individual subjects. Students in the MA programmes in Icelandic literature, Icelandic linguistics, Icelandic studies and Icelandic teaching can take the course as part of the MA course requirements in Icelandic literature or Icelandic linguistics. Students in the MA programme in Icelandic teaching can, however, not have this course as the only linguistics or literature course in their MA.

Faeroese and Icelandic (ÍSL515M)

Faroeese is the language that has the strongest similarity to Icelandic among the Nordic languages but it has changed more than Icelandic with respect to phonology, inflections and syntax. Investigating Faroese is important for Icelandic linguistics because Faroese provides a unique perspective on how Icelandic could have changed or may change in the next centuries.

This course will give an overview of the grammar of Faroese (phonology, inflections, word-formation and syntax) in comparison to Icelandic and the other Nordic languages. Language changes, dialects and foreign influence on Faroese will also be discussed. Moreover, students will get some training in listening to spoken Faroese.

Data collection and statistical analysis in the humanities and language technology (ÍSL612M)

This is a course for people who want to be able to analyze datasets stastically to better understand them, for example through visualization with graphs. Recent years have seen an increased focus on data collection and statistical analysis within the humanities. This is particularly apparent in growing branches such as computational linguistics and psycholinguistics, cognitive literary studies and experimental philosophy, to name a few. The push towards quantitative methods occurs at a time where the validity and reliability of well-established statistical methods are called into question in other fields, with increased demands of replicability and open access as well as data protection and responsibility. In this course, students explore the value of quantitative methods in their field while getting training in the collection and analysis of data. A diverse set of research methods will be introduced, ranging from surveys to corpus analysis and experiments in which participants’ response to stimuli (such as words, texts or audio-visual materials) is quantified. Basic concepts in statistics will be reviewed, enabling students to know the difference between descriptive and inferential statistics, understand statistical significance and interpret visual representations of data in graphs. The course will be largely practical and students are expected to apply their knowledge of data collection and analysis under the instructor’s guidance. Students will work on a project within their own discipline but will also explore the possibility of cross-disciplinary work. Open source tools such as R Studio will be used for all assignments but no prior knowledge of the software or statistics in general is required. The course is suitable for all students within the humanities who want to collect quantitative data to answer interesting questions and could therefore be a useful preparation for a BA or MA project.

Programming in language technology (MLT701F)

The course is first and foremost organized for students in language technology that have a background in linguistics (or humanities) but are not experienced in computer science. This course is most often taken in the same semester as the course “Computer Science 1a”. If someone with a different background is interested in the course, please contact the teacher for further information.  The course is taught alongside ÍSL333G Programming for the humanities at the BA-level and all students attend the same lectures but MA students get longer assignments than BA students.

The main goal of this course is to support students in taking their first step toward learning programming, help them to knack the basis and train them in solving simple but diverse assignments in language technology using Python. Besides, students will be introduced to a few text processing tools that can be used for natural language processing.

MA-thesis in General Linguistics (AMV441L)

MA-thesis in General Linguistics

History of the Icelandic Language (MIS803F)

This course presents an overview of the history of Icelandic language from its earliest attestation to the present. Topics covered include the nature of language change, the sources of evidence for the history of the Icelandic language, the prehistory of Icelandic, selected phonological changes, morphological changes and syntactic changes, the First Grammatical Treatise, Norwegian influence in the 13th and 14th century, the language of the Reformation Era, dialectal variation; nationalism, language, and identi-ty, the standardization of Icelandic in the 19th and 20th century, tradition, legislation and controversy on personal names and family names, the Icelandic Language Council and some current issues in Icelandic language policy.

The course is taught through a combination of lectures and workshops. A fair amount of time will be spent examining texts from different periods in their original orthography, identifying and analyzing indications of language change and developing skills in dating texts based on orthographic and linguistic evidence.

— Syllabus for download [pdf] —

Course synopsis

Week 1

• (1) Language change: some basic concepts

How do we acquire language? Who makes the rules? The creative aspect of human language. How does language change? Attitudes toward language change and The Golden Age Principle. The spread of language change. Protolanguages and language families.

• (2) The prehistory: Proto-Indo-European, Proto-Germanic, and Proto-Norse

A peek into the distant past and the road down to Icelandic: The Germanic Consonant Shift, Grimm’s Law, Verner’s Law, and a glimpse of Gothic. Some linguistic characteristics of the Germanic languages and North Germanic in particular.

Week 2

• (3) Old Icelandic: the sources of evidence

How can we know something about a language spoken centuries ago? Texts, runes and the Latin alphabet. Medieval orthography vs. modern orthography. Whose lan-guage is reflected in the medieval manuscripts? The limitations of medieval texts as sources of linguistic evidence. How do we access medieval texts? Which editions should we use for linguistic research?

• (4) The sounds of language: phonemes, allophones

On the production of speech sounds (phonetics) and how they make up a system (phonology). Umlaut, syncope, phonemic split, minimal pairs, complementary distri-bution, and the emergence of the Old Icelandic vowel system.

Week 3

• (5) Word formation: ablaut, derivation, suffixes

Taking the words apart: What are they made of? Morphemes, roots, and suffixes, derivation and compounding. Root structure, ablaut, and umlaut. Word formation and inflection. What is the longest word in Icelandic?Vaðlaheiðarvegavinnuverkfærageymsluskúrsútidyralyklakippuhringur?

• (6) The First Grammatical Treatise and the earliest attested Icelandic

Examining a treatise by an anonymous Icelandic author from the middle of the 12th century on Icelandic speech sounds and orthography. The Latin alphabet was a rela-tively new medium, and the main topic is: How to write 12th-century Icelandic with the Latin alphabet? How to find a suitable orthographic representation for a large vowel system?

Week 4

• (7) Classical Old Icelandic: the phonology around the year 1200

How do we think Icelandic sounded around 1200? What is the orthographic evidence? Examining texts in the orthography from around 1200 will give us some idea. The vowel system was large, it seems. Did Old Icelandic (really) have nasal vowels? Can we reproduce this pronunciation? We will try in class.

• (8) The emergence of the Modern Icelandic vowel system

The development of the vowel system from Old Icelandic to Modern Icelandic. Phonemic merger and a crumbling vowel system? Diphthongization. The Quantity Shift? “Skewed speech” in modern times. How does this show in the texts? How does it sound? A whistle-stop tour of the history of the Icelandic vowel system from 1200 to 2000.

Week 5

• (9) Other phonological changes

From at to að, ok to og, maðr to maður, and other matters. What happened in Eyjafjallajökull? How do we interpret the orthographic evidence? Does the spelling reflect the pronunciation? What are inverse spellings?

• (10) Other phonological changes

Changes in pronunciation: From lengi to leingi and langur and lángur, the Westfjords dialect, and other things similar. Breaking news: The modern lengthening of n — úr skónum or úr skónnum?

Week 6

• (11) Taking stock: the manuscripts, the phonological changes, and the orthographic evidence

Workshop: examining texts from different periods and dating manuscripts based on linguistic and orthographic evidence.

• (12) Analogy and the mechanics of morphological change

How do inflectional patterns change? On paradigmatic levelling and analogical exten-sion. Sturtevant’s Paradox and the never-ending tug-of-war between phonological changes and analogical changes.

— S T U D Y   W E E K —

Week 7

• (13) Morphology: changes in the inflection of substantives

Changes in the inflection of the hirðir type of substantives; ermr and other feminines with nom. sing. -r; randar, randir, rendr and other feminines with multiple plurals.

• (14) Morphology: changes in the inflection of adjectives

Adjectives with stem-final -j- and -v-: from fölvan to fölan. Adjectives with a disyllabic stem: from göfgan to göfugan. Adjectives with stem-final -l-, -n-, and -s-: from sælli to sællri and back to sælli. Changes in the weak/definite inflection of adjectives: með hægra fæti or hægri fæti?

Week 8

• (15) Morphology: changes in the inflection of pronouns

The loss of the pronominal dual: vit tvau and við öll. The possessive pronouns okkar, ykkarr, and yðvarr and the end of an inflection: from okkru barni to okkar barni. The long and winding road from nekkverr, nakkvat to nokkur, nokkuð and the many forms of engi. Changes in the demonstrative sjá/þessi: the trilogy sjá saga, þessi saga, and þessur saga.

• (16) Morphology: changes in the verb conjugation

On strong verbs becoming weak (and weak verbs becoming strong): barg to bjargaði, halp to hjálpaði. Changes in the endings of the indicative and subjunctive: ek em to ek er, ek vil and ég vill; ef ek bæra or bæri. The development of the middle voice: from ek kǫllumk to ég kallast. Preterite participles: bariðr and taliðr vs. barinn and talinn.

Week 9

• (17) Word order: syntax and syntactic changes

Verb-Second order (V2), Narrative Inversion, and declining variation in the verb phrase (VP). Inflected and uninflected preterite participle with hafa.

• (18) Word order: syntax and syntactic changes

Oblique subjects and “diseases” known as “Dative Sickness” and “Nominative Sickness.”

Week 10

• (19) Language contact: Icelandic and other languages

Lexical borrowing: Why do languages borrow words from one another? Norwegian influence on Icelandic. Reformation Era language and Low German influence. Danish influence on Icelandic. Basque-Icelandic glossaries. Icelandic in North America.

• (20) Dialectal variation

Speaking Northern and speaking Southern; the Westfjords variety and the Eastern speech.

Week 11

• (21) Nationalism, language, and identity

Debate in the 18th century: Is the Icelandic language a national treasure to be preserved intact for future generations or a barrier to social development that needs to be removed by adopting Danish? Linguistic purism and neologisms. Is it possible to reverse language change? Medieval linguistic ideals and the emergence of a linguistic standard.

• (22) The 19th and the 20th centuries: the standardization of Icelandic

Establishing an orthographic standard: “ð” the comeback kid and the different fates of “y” and “z”; “langur” and “lángur” revisited.

Week 12

• (23) Personal names and place names

Personal names, patronymics, matronymics, and family names: Tradition, legislation, and controversy. The most popular personal names. Names from the Norse mythology: Freyr, Freyja, Iðunn, Njör-ður, Óðinn, Sif. Names from the saga literature: Hrappur and Mörður, the decline of Hallgerður and the rise of Bergþóra. Place names, local markedness and the morphological development. Personal names vs. natural features and landforms. The papar place names and the Dímons: What do they tell us?

• (24) Modern Icelandic language policy

The Icelandic Language Council and its role. The 2009 Language Policy. The challenges faced by a small language community in times of globalization. Digital language contact between Icelandic and English. Why doesn’t Siri speak Icelandic? “Inclusive language” and feminist language reform. The gender-neutral pronoun hán.

Prerequisites

Some skills in Icelandic are necessary to fully benefit from the course. MIS105F Old Icelandic 1 or equivalent study of Old Icelandic is sufficient or some skills in Modern Icelandic (consult the instructor).

Course requirements and evaluation

The final grade for the course will be based on:

• homework assignments: 30% .
• linguistic analysis of a text: 30% .
• research project: 30%.
• text of the week: student-led discussion: 10%.

See the syllabus for further information on these tasks.

At the University of Iceland, grades are awarded in whole or half numbers on the scale 0–10. The passing grade is 5.0.

Independent Study A (AMV002F)

Independent study project. Please contact head of program for more information.

Independent Study B (AMV004F)

Independent study project. Please contact head of program for more information.

: Current topics in linguistics: Origin and evolution of language and its influence on thought (AMV602M)

In this course we will discuss selected topics in linguistics, with a focus on the origin of language and its influence on thought. Most of the course will be devoted to the origin and evolution of language and speech, seen from a broad perspective. Classic theories and research in the field will be discussed, including hypotheses on the role of gesture (Corballis) and grooming (Dunbar), the “single mutation” theory (Chomsky), and research on the evolution of speech (Fitch). We will also discuss more recent research that provides insights into the origin and nature of speech and the language capacity, such as research on songbirds, musicality and interaction. Did human language originate in gesture or vocal calls of animals? Did it evolve out of the need for gossip and grooming? Did music have any role in the evolution of language? What can genetic studies tell us about the evolution of language? Do biological biases or the environment influence the evolution of languages?  In the course we will also discuss the relationship between language and thought. Categorization of various phenomena and objects in languages of the world will be discussed, for example in relation to color vocabulary. How does the language we speak influence the way we think and perceive the world around us?

AI and LLMs in the context of Icelandic (ÍSL616M)

Do AI tools work in Icelandic? Do they work as well as in languages such as English? In this course we explore these two questions in the context of Large Language Models (LLMs) such as the ones underlying the ChatGPT and Claude AI assistants. We will examine the methods used to assess the language comprehension and production of LLMs in languages such as Icelandic and discuss whether various potential risks of increased LLM use (e.g. disinformation and bias propagation) are exacerbated in lower-resource language communities. We will place these discussions in the context of current theoretical debates, asking what AI performance in Icelandic tells us about the nature of LLMs and human language, e.g. regarding questions about how children and machines learn language.

Etymology (ÍSM007F)

The course will introduce and discuss topics and methods in etymological research. Different types of etymological dictionaries will be compared. Examples from Icelandic will be discussed, i.e., the history of particular words and the information that etymological dictionaries provide on their development.

The Language of the Eddic Poems (ÍSM025F)

In this seminar some Eddic poems will be read and their language examined. Features which cast light on the age of the poems will be given particular attention. The evidence of the Eddic poems will be compared with that from other linguistic sources. Various methods of dating the Eddic poems will be discussed.

Contemporary comparative Scandinavian syntax (ÍSM205F)

The main purpose of the course is to give an overview of the syntax of the modern Scandinavian languages from a generative perspective. The emphasis is on the comparison of the Insular Scandinavian languages (Icelandic and Faroese) on the one hand and the Mainland Scandinavian languages (Danish, Norwegian and Swedish) on the other. Aspects of the syntax of some lesser-known Scandinavian varieties is also included for comparison, including Övdalian (Swe. Älvalsmålet), for instance, which preserves certain inflectional and syntactic features of Old Norse that have disappeared from the Mainland Scandinavian standard languages. Selected topics in recent research on variation in Scandinavian syntax are covered and the students will be trained in designing and administering syntactic questionnaires.